and-worker of three
generations ago has in turn been increased many times. Formerly it
required 200 hours of human labour to place 100 tons of ore on a railroad
car. To-day, aided by machinery, but two hours of human labour is
required to do the same task. The United States Bureau of Labour is
responsible for the following table, showing the comparatively recent
increase in man's food- and shelter-getting efficiency:

Machine Hours Hand Hours
Barley (100 bushels) 9 211
Corn (50 bushels 34 228
shelled, stalks,
husks and blades cut
into fodder)
Oats (160 bushels) 28 265
Wheat (50 bushels) 7 160
Loading ore (loading 2 200
100 tons iron ore on
cars)
Unloading coal 20 240
(transferring 200
tons from canal-boats
to bins 400 feet
distant)
Pitchforks (50 12 200
pitchforks, 12-inch
tines)
Plough (one landside 3 118
plough, oak beams and
handles)

According to the same authority, under the best conditions for
organization in farming, labour can produce 20 bushels of wheat for 66
cents, or 1 bushel for 3.5 cents. This was done on a bonanza farm of
10,000 acres in California, and was the average cost of the whole product
of the farm. Mr. Carroll D. Wright says that to-day 4,500,000 men, aided
by machinery, turn out a product that would require the labour of
40,000,000 men if produced by hand. Professor Herzog, of Austria, says
that 5,000,000 people with the machinery of to-day, employed at socially
useful labour, would be able to supply a population of 20,000,000 people
with all the necessaries and small luxuries of life by working 1.5 hours
per day.

This being so, matter being mastered, man's efficiency for food- and
shelter-getting being increased a thousandfold over the efficiency of the
caveman, then why is it that millions of modern men live more miserably
than lived the caveman? This is the question the revolutionist asks, and
he asks it of the managing class, the capitalist class. The capitalist
class does not answer it. The capitalist class cannot answer it.

If modern man's food- and shelter-getting efficiency is a thousandfold
greater than that of the caveman, why, then, are there 10,000,000 people
in the United States to-day who are not properly shelt